


Phantasmagoria

by snagov



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Angst, Epistolary, Established Relationship, Forbidden Love, Holy Water, Inspired by Midas and the Golden Touch (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Love, M/M, Romance, The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:42:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25174072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: Aziraphale is terrified of Heaven looking over his shoulder. He is terrified of burning Crowley with his holy-water-touch. So he doesn't reach out. He never says a word. Aziraphale loves Crowley in the wordless and touchless way of a ghost.But there have always been languages for ghosts to speak.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 107





	Phantasmagoria

_"My hero bares his nerves along my wrist  
_ _That rules from wrist to shoulder,  
_ _Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost,  
_ _Leans on my mortal ruler,  
_ _The proud spine spurning turn and twist._

 _And these poor nerves so wired to the skull  
__Ache on the lovelorn paper  
__I hug to love with my unruly scrawl  
__That utters all love hunger  
__And tells the page the empty ill."  
_Dylan Thomas, _my hero bares his nerves_

_A flat in Mayfair, London  
_ _2019_

Let us consider the invention of writing. 

Somewhere in warm Sumer around five-thousand long years ago, someone had struck a symbol upon a clay tablet. Said _this is what it means, this is what I'm trying to say. This is how you say it._

Writing gave us two things. The ability to not be known. We could spill our thoughts out and not have them be owned by our own voice. We could leave them unsigned and nameless, cast out anonymously into the ether. We could sign someone else's name, pretend these were never our words, our ideas. We would not have to claim them, own up to them, admit them. 

It also gave us the ability to live forever. 

Our words, our voices, trickling throughout the centuries. Our thoughts in borrowed mouths and on lended tongue. The ghost of someone else's lungs, their temporary breath, breathing life into our stories once again, even if just for a little while.

Now, Aziraphale is finding, it is difficult to use his voice again.

Look past the happy ending. Let's dig. What's beneath? What do you know about sailing? Not all ships make it home to port. He runs his hand over a stubble-rough chin, thinking about Odysseus. Yes, Odysseus on the water, casting forth from Troy and seeking his long-ache home. How many interruptions had the sailor had to endure before he'd gotten there? Odysseus, Odysseus, who asked you where are you going and what do you wish? Tell me, who then waited to hear your answer?

Hang the trenchcoat up behind the door. Khaki gabardine. Rain-spotted. Fraying at the sleeves. He fingers the little threads coming undone. His square fingers loosen the tie, choking at his throat suddenly. Let free the half-windsor, unbutton the shirt, roll up the sleeves. Breathe, yes, breathe. Shake the last stretch of the road out from you. Pale-eyed and easy-frowned. The hard bucket seats of the long bus ride from Tadfield still ache in his spine. Aziraphale rolls his neck.

Scale back, scale back. Let's look. Where has Aziraphale found himself? The sound of the door shutting behind Crowley is very loud. Crowley sags against it, his spine more of a suggestion than anything else. He breathes in, shrugs his sharp shoulders. Aziraphale watches as Crowley drags a hand over his pointed, smoke-burnt face, over his sharp chin, his long fingers trying to dig the Apocalypse out from behind his eyes.

"Wine?" Crowley asks, jerking his head toward the kitchen. His hips on a swivel, turning that direction. Aziraphale nods, hesitant still in the hallway. He glances at the windows, around the corners. His hands feel for the wind, the gust of a feathered interruption. 

_Are we being watched?_ Aziraphale doesn't ever stop looking out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the moment his missteps are caught. _Does it matter anymore? (It doesn't, does it? We stopped the world from ending. Together. Right in front of them. There's nothing here that would be a surprise. We're already fucked.)_

* * *

_**panopticon** **. noun.**_

_: a circular prison built with cells arranged radially so that a guard at a central position can see all the prisoners_

* * *

Lift up your voice. We cannot start at the ending. No, you won’t appreciate the light without the dark. Let’s start at the beginning. Perfectly reasonable place, the beginning. We’ll start with that awful old phrase, _once upon a time._ Once upon a time, back when God was all and was a bit lonely, She had made the heavens and the angels to keep Her company. That was in the ineffable and unknowable _before._ There were no years then, no months, nor days (there was no earth to rotate, no sun to revolve around). We cannot quantify _before_. It is an eternity, it is a single breath. In _before,_ the angels, with their six faces and their six wings, played their little lyres and slept on dandelion clouds. Then, eventually, God stirred and made the earth. This we know. Why did She make it? That is another story entirely; another passion, another hunger. (Not even the angels are sure. It is only later, much later, that an angel stands at the ocean of himself, wondering how to swim.)

We must begin here, with _once upon a time._

Once upon a time, there was an angel that stood at the garden’s eastern gate. It was the angel’s first commission, standing there, a bit of sweat on his brow, silently watching the earth. _Go on down there,_ God had said, _go on and see what that racket is all about._ So he had gone, this Principality, this garden-sitter. The world was still young, the leaves still budding on the trees. Aziraphale had clutched at the blueberries and the wild rhubarb. He had sucked the sweetness from thistle, chewed the petals of orchids and the sea beans growing in the little marsh. Peaches had grown next to papayas. Cucumbers among taro root. There had been corn, there had been tomatoes. Aziraphale had piled them all into his white shift, taking them back with him to the gate. (As long as they were not apples, he was fine.)

In Eden, he had met someone. The serpent had slithered up, belly-first. “Well, that went down like a lead balloon," the once-serpent had said, suddenly human-shaped and unjustly beautiful. Aziraphale had chuckled and then caught himself, not quite sure _why._ Only that you do not laugh with demons. That the hereditary enemy is no one to tell a joke to, share a smile with. There are rules, of course. Foundational. The bones of his world. (Look back at our first writings, the Code of Hammurabi on a black basalt stele. Laws and punishment. At the beginning of the world, we handed down _do_ and _do not._ ) 

"Sorry, what was that?"

“I said _that_ went down like a lead balloon."

The angel had paused then, remembering what God had mentioned of the softness of human bodies. Their weaknesses to fire and steel, who cannot breathe water like fish, who have no wings to fly. "I gave it away." 

"You _what?_ " Crawly had asked, eyes widening.

"I gave it away!"

Later, the demon had had more to say. “I like your eyes,” he had murmured, glancing over from under Aziraphale's white wing. (Aziraphale will never pull his golden ring off, never stray far from gold. All because this first stranger at the gate, this gold-eyed demon had once walked up, told him that it might be alright _._ )

That was a very long time ago. Crowley faces the window now, frowning intensely at something out past the panes of glass. 

"Preference?" Aziraphale asks, his fingers ghosting over the bottles on the rack.

“Whatever you want," Crowley shrugs. "The cabernet's good. Could do with something heavy.” Aziraphale glances up, blinking. Taking in the Crowley's disheveled appearance. The red-wine hair standing up unruly on all ends, as if he had run his long fingers through it. (There is an odd sense of familiarity to that image. An oft-repeated, well-remembered habit.) His jacket had been lost somewhere in the depths of the hall before coming into the room and his silver tie hangs loosely around his neck. The sleeves of his black shirt are pushed up over his elbows, showing strong and tanned vascular arms. The veins lay blue and green just under the skin and for the briefest moment, Aziraphale imagines tracing them back to the heart. 

His mouth runs dry. (Not dry enough.)

“Wine opener?” 

“In the drawer,” Crowley mutters. Pauses and spins around, “Wait, not _that_ drawer.”

Aziraphale has pulled the drawer open. Papers sit thick and stacked. He spreads them out on the granite countertop.

“Are these -“

Time passes. There’s time to kill. Crowley doesn’t look at him. “Yeah.”

Letters. Hundreds of letters on paper and parchment. On vellum and papyrus too. All written in Aziraphale's flowing, looping script. Things they had said. Things they had never said. His hands shiver as he touches the papers, yellow from age, worn from being handled over and over and over again. Soft around the edges from centuries of fingertips (the same fingertips). _You kept everything. All of it, every word I ever wrote to you._

All of these letters, written by Aziraphale and sent from other cities and other times. Different words, changing syllables and always the same truth.

_I love you._

(What else is there to say?)

* * *

_Ancient Sumeria  
2250 B.C. (circa)_ _  
_ _(Written in cuneiform.)_

_Angel,_

_I have not seen your face since the temple was built. Let me approach the light, would you? I can bring you this shadow, cover you like a blanketing storm. Would you let me bring you honeyed wine? I would and gather flowers as I came to you. I miss your hands, your hair, your face, your eyes. I have never touched them. I make the touch of you up as I go._

_Do you sleep? I sleep. You're there with me as I do._ _There's a woman here. A priestess. Enheduanna. Sometimes I tell her a little about you, share her wine. She wrote something for me, about you, called it poetry. (Might have slipped some words to her, a little something something, you get my drift.) Anyway, I think you might like it._

_If anyone asks, I never said it. They’re her words. Not mine._

(In Sumeria, they had met on a street in Uruk and lingered over wine. Grain was sold and the sun beat down, somewhere near them, the Tigris and Euphrates flowed on. Crowley had paused in the middle of their conversation, his eyes shining like a censer, his thumb brushing a drop away from the corner of Aziraphale's mouth. We always know when we're about to be kissed, angels are no different. Aziraphale's heartbeat had sped up, taking the stairs two at a time. He had looked not at those burnt eyes but at that half-parted mouth, the lick of a tongue to wet it, to stay the nerves. It was the shining spit on Crowley's lip that had stayed Aziraphale. He had leaned back into his seat, his spine a sudden rod.  
  
"Crowley," he had said, "I'm holy."

"Trust me, angel," Crowley had laughed, leaning in, "I'm well aware."

"Holy water could kill you." 

Crowley had spiked a dark brow then. "Don't follow."

Breathe in, take a moment to center. "If I kiss you, my saliva - or anything - if I get anything on you - you would be destroyed."

Crowley hesitated, shifting his weight to another hip. His thumb still on Aziraphale's jaw, damp with red wine. "Do you think?"

"I cannot risk it," Aziraphale had said. "Not with you." _I cannot lose you.)_

* * *

_**ghostwrite. verb.** _ _  
_ _  
_ _intransitive verb: to write for and in the name of another_

_transitive verb: to write (a speech, a book, etc.) for another who is the presumed or credited author_

* * *

Now, somewhere in a dark, modernist flat in Mayfair, Aziraphale holds the entire story in his hands. The book of love spread open in the palms of his uncertain hands. Does it matter if anyone sees them anymore? Centuries and centuries of his own love spilled out in iron-gall and carbon ink too. A confession in so many words. _How much have I written to you, always saying the same thing?_

"You kept them," Aziraphale murmurs, spreading his wide hands out over the papers. Crowley hovers at the counter. He makes no move to come closer, no move to stop Aziraphale's careful study. He's a dark shadow at the edge of Aziraphale's vision (the ever-present ghost in his bed). _I have never touched you, never made space for you there. (You have never for me.) I cannot go through the day, move through the world without thinking of you. Without a memory of you at my side, the phantom-touch of your fingers at the small of my back._

"'Course I did."

"You could have been killed if you were caught," Aziraphale says, looking up suddenly.

"Easy," Crowley says, his hips in his crow-black jeans slotting against the counter. "Just made sure I wasn't caught. See? Simple."

 _"Crowley."_ Aziraphale is an admonishment in good intentions.

"My choice, angel," Crowley says, not looking away. The glasses hide his eyes, the shift of his face impossible to read. "And I chose to keep them."

"So did I," Aziraphale whispers. Yes, there is a lockbox under his unused bed. Pull back the hopeful quilt, draw the white muslin curtains. Fit the key to the lock and open it up. Touch the lock of dark red hair, set the ink-black feather to the side. Aziraphale binds each century with a colored ribbon. Crowley's spidery script in every iteration of language, a love whispered across thousands of years. It has never been a question of if Crowley loved him, no. Their love had been wild and loud, written in countless gestures and fond smiles. It could not go unwritten. It could only go unvoiced. 

The invention of writing had given a language to ghosts. _I love you,_ Aziraphale writes. (He cannot say it, not out loud.) _I love you,_ Crowley scrawls. (His lips are sealed, his hands are free.) All love stories are ghost stories. Someone said that once. You and I both know it's true.

_Would I lie to you?_

"I know you did," Crowley murmurs. Aziraphale cannot see him. He still stands at the kitchen counter, gripping a wine opener and nothing else. The window is bare and the Mayfair night rolls out in front of him. The kitchen lights reflect in the window, bright and white, right behind his hair, lighting him up like a halo.

"You did not know that,” Aziraphale says, prim-voiced. “I never told you." (He’s never told _anyone_.)

"It's _you_ , angel," Crowley says, something soft on the edges of his words. "Come on. _You'd_ never destroy a letter. Or a book." There's something else there, hidden in his voice. Wrapped up and folded in, a letter tucked in an envelope. It sounds like _you'd never destroy me._

"Souvenir," Aziraphale murmurs almost absentmindedly, his fingers touching the ancient pages. His own handwriting stares up at him across thousands of years. This curator's treasure here in a small box. There are letters in Latin and Sanskrit, Greek and Italian. Chinese and, yes, Esperanto too. 

"Something like that," Crowley says. His voice sounds closer. Aziraphale looks up and he's come up behind, his chin nearly on Aziraphale's shoulder. His warmth is steady behind Aziraphale's back, reaching through the weave of his khaki gabardine coat, his velvet waistcoat. He inhales the roughness of Crowley's woody soap.

"Tell me," Aziraphale whispers. "Tell me in person." _Tell me that you love me. Tell me with your voice and your words. We've written it, we've put the words in so many poets' heads, letting them say it for us. Say it just this once, just here with you and me._

Hear how Crowley swallows, the dry-throat measure of his hesitance. "It's hard to say," Crowley mutters, "In real life. Easier just to write. Don't have to look you in the face then."

"You could write it," Aziraphale breathes. "If you prefer? If it's too much -"

"Nah," Crowley says, his hands are gentle and shaking as they curl around Aziraphale's arms. He is careful. Aziraphale wants to press backwards into him, to sag into where Crowley has caught him. The smell of the other man surrounds him as these welcoming arms do. Vetiver and cedar, apples and searing-hot metal. The tar-like sourness of carbolic soap. You never forget the smell of home. Crowley is home. "You deserve to hear it," Crowley presses on. "At least once."

"Once." It aches in Aziraphale's heart, this time limit. 

"Might not make it through tomorrow." Breath on the back of Aziraphale's neck, hands from an unseen body holding him. A ghost. A beloved specter. _How many times have I imagined you? (Am I imagining you now? Is this a dream? Did the world end and this is what I've taken with me?)_

"We will," he says, firmly and decidedly. Aziraphale brushes the uncertainty away from his voice, sweeping it under the rug. _You've been strong for me all this time. Let me do it, just this once. For you._

 _I want to kiss you. Just once. At least once._ Aziraphale swallows, he leans back into Crowley's arms, that warm and steady presence behind him. He doesn't turn around, doesn't lift his face. If he does, if there is a dry peck on a bare cheek, he will not know how to stop. Look at him, a hedonistic thing aching to be indulged. _I want all of you. Your blood and your bones. The veins, the pleura and sinew. I want the atoms that sew you together and I want the spit in your mouth and I want your hair in my hands and you inside of me. And I want and I want and I want want want._

Crowley nods and Aziraphale knows he doesn't quite believe him. "Do you remember when you wrote to me in Greece? You were staying on Lesbos. Your letter - "

"I remember."

* * *

_590 B.C.  
_ _Ancient Greece_

_Dearest,_

_I have been staying in the company of friends. One, a lyric poet. I have been telling her of you. Your red hair, your soft neck. The sharp edge of your jaw. She asked me how it felt to think of you. What it felt to carry something like this._ _You burn me, I said._ _Ὄπτιασ ἄμμε._

_She will use it for a poem. Please know that the poem is yours, my dear. It always has been, rather like your Enheduanna. Regardless, please burn me more._

(In Greece, Aziraphale had burned. Laid out on his bed, his chiton shoved up around his hips. Taking himself in hand and wondering how the hellfire-touch of a demon would feel. Crowley might be warmer than his own skin is, so Aziraphale soaks his hand in hot water before running his fingers down the length of his cock, teasing at the head. Before taking himself in firm hand, fucking out an ancient rhythm. Something he'd taken from Eden, tucked away in his pocket. _Please please please._

He remembers the soft lichen where Eve had first known Adam and imagines Crowley there, over and above him like a cave wall. A dark shelter. _I've got you, angel,_ Crowley would say, burying a kiss at his neck and himself deep within. Aziraphale comes on his own fist. A blessed spill of something holy, something damp. He could have anyone on this Earth, make love to them without worry.

Except Crowley. Never him.) 

* * *

**_phantasm. noun._ **

_: a product of fantasy: such as_ _  
_ **_a_ ** _: delusive appearance:_ _illusion_ **_  
_ ** **_b_ ** _: ghost, specter_ **_  
_ ** **_c_ ** _: a figment of the imagination_ _  
_ **_2_ ** _: a mental representation of a real object_

* * *

Crowley pulls Aziraphale tighter against him. Buries his pointed nose in Aziraphale's hair, presses thin lips against his crown. Dry and chaste. Sparks scatter. Static electricity. Aziraphale swallows, ducking his chin into his starched collar and tartan bowtie. All wrapped up, all done up. He has a vision of his shirt hanging open, the bowtie lost on the dark floor. It’s difficult, trying to reason with his magnet heart. 

He turns around, there in Crowley's arms. That fixed stare, immutable and constant, hidden behind dark lenses. Aziraphale marks his progress by other tells. That twitch in Crowley's sinewy arms, that lift of the knife-edged jaw. The smallest rise of the coal-black brow. A hesitance in the swallow of the throat. 

He gestures to Crowley's glasses. "May I?" 

The nod is quick yet jittery. Crowley's chest expands with a deep breath, pressed there against Aziraphale's own. "Yeah," he says in a low voice. Sotto voce. "Anything you want."

Take the sunglasses from a willing and bent head. Mind the ears, fold the arms in. He sets the pair on the counter. Crowley watches him the entire time, eyes as gold as butterfat. Aziraphale’s hands smooth the fabric over Crowley’s warm chest, his palms feeling the steady sound of Crowley’s counted-out and counted-upon heartbeat, slowly ticking past the minutes. 

Crowley looks down at him. His eyes as gold as a wristwatch, his mouth half-open. 

If they were anyone else, they would kiss. 

"I want to kiss you," Crowley says, running one long finger along Aziraphale's jaw. His soft cheek, the line of his throat. In the wake of Crowley's touch, Aziraphale's skin wakes up.

"I can't, darling, you know that." 

"Yeah," Crowley murmurs, "Yeah, I know. S' alright, angel."

Aziraphale cannot kiss Crowley, not with his mouth. He finds translations of love and intimacy instead. If he cannot say it with his mouth, his damp tongue, he instead can run his sturdy fingers through Crowley's long hair, can make quiet pilgrimages with his fingertips over Crowley's bare breastbone. Here, in this kitchen, the grey-gravel walls like a cave around them. 

"You know I want to. I want nothing more," Aziraphale whispers. 

Crowley threads their fingers together. Presses his forehead to knotted hands, a dry kiss on each of the knuckles. "I know. I know. Don't worry, angel, I know."

Aziraphale nods. 

"A whole night."

"Yep," Crowley nods. "You wanna, er, watch something? You could read if you like, I can let you be."

 _I don't want to be alone. Not tonight. (Not ever.)_ "Let's just sit for a while? Gather our thoughts. There's the prophecy." 

"Right," Crowley says, "Yeah, the old witch. With the book. Almost forgot."

They wander into Crowley's sleek living room, carrying their wine and trailing half-finished thoughts behind them. The light isn't on but Crowley's windows are long, floor-to-ceiling, and the moonlight is bright. The pale light glints off of Crowley's sharp clavicles, bare in the unbuttoned collar of his shirt. It pools there in the dips and divots of him. Aziraphale wants to kiss it off, to drink it up. Crowley, ever kept down in the deep, has learned to rebel like any sea monster. Like any creature not allowed to reach up, to come near the sun. 

Crowley takes the sofa, as he always does. Aziraphale pauses, looking at the very-respectable chair, their usual distance. In love, everything has meaning. Everything is a symbol, a letter. A word trying to convey something else. Why did you sit here and not there? What do you want the most, like best? Why that shirt and not the other? He tries to puzzle out the significance of the chair and the sofa, the exact measure of space and expectation.

He takes the spot on the sofa next to Crowley instead.

Crowley glances at him, sidelong and questioning. His wineglass held between his knees. Aziraphale reaches out, reaches over with an uncertain hand. He winds a lock of red-bloom hair around his own gentle fingers, seeing how the light shines on Crowley's bare skin. Off his gold eyes, his white teeth. Any creature kept too long in the dark will learn to make its own light. Aziraphale wants to bathe in his bioluminescence. 

He cannot. He can learn to be proximate, can learn to be close. He cannot dip within, cannot kiss. Cannot splash about. He must, as Aziraphale far too well knows, be careful. It's the danger of these corporations, these earthbound bodies. The human body is made of seventy-percent water. Aziraphale is a holy man. He keeps his holy water mouth shut, keeps himself dry, the wet and spillable parts of himself sealed away. _I love you_ he says, through the brush of hands, through braiding Crowley's hair on the back of the Ark. _I love you_ can be said so many ways. Aziraphale rubs his nose and cheek across their hands, lit by the warm gold in Crowley's eyes. 

"You know it's enough, right?" Crowley asks in a rough tone. Pitched low, the vibrato of concern. 

_I know. I know I'll always be enough for you. Always. (And you will be for me.)_ "Yes," Aziraphale says. He traces the sharp cut of Crowley's nose, laughing a little as Crowley tries to watch, to follow it. As he goes slightly cross-eyed in the effort. 

Is this how King Midas had felt when he flung out his hands to the world and stole the grapes from the table, finding they had turned to polished gold in his mouth? Is this how he had felt when his wife had taken a separate bed, when he could only touch her through sheets of plastic, only kiss her if they held a pane of glass up between their mouths?

Aziraphale has no gold in his touch, just a holy water mouth, a holy water body. Sealed up, sealed off, don't you dare spill a drop. 

Yes, he loves Crowley, so he never unscrews the cap.

* * *

  
  


_44 AD  
_ _Rome_

_Angel, you know exactly what an oyster is. You knew what you were doing. You're a study in temptation, you know that? Should be running the Third Circle. ~~Or the Second.~~_

_Right, yeah. Anyway. How does it go? Heard it once before. Oh yeah, wish you were here._

  
  


(In Rome, they had met in the baths. The room had been deserted, they had pressed up against a wall. _"Your clothes are dry, aren't they?"_ Crowley had breathed into Aziraphale's neck. He had shaken his head, the light catching in his pale curls. 

_"Yes."_ Aziraphale had said, bending under the weight of Crowley's mouth along his chest, layers of white wool draped between them. His neck bent backward under the phantasm touch. Pressure only but never skin. The idea of warmth, the gust of breath. Crowley makes love to him like the wind might, with unseen hands and over clothes. Crowley touches him as a ghost would, words in his ear, and nothing ever ever ever reaching in, skin to skin, making it real.)

* * *

"We can't," Aziraphale says.

"Yeah, I know," Crowley murmurs. He drinks, glances away, somewhere out the dark window where the city looms and the stars are curious neighbors. "I shouldn't push."

"I'm sorry - " 

"Don't apologize," Crowley says, still holding onto Aziraphale's hand. He lifts it, kissing each white hair-dusted knuckle. One at a time. "It's not about that."

"You cannot possibly wait forever. I might never be able to -" Aziraphale cannot ask someone to stay through the winter, to live on rations. Meager meals, chew leather shoes and never meat. He cannot ask Crowley to live on a diet of words and promises. On _maybe somedays_ and _I hope we can soons._

Crowley looks up. "Hey. You're the only one. You've always been the only one. It doesn't matter how. It's about the - you know, the _you_. Inside of you."

Aziraphale nods, clinging to his wineglass like a touchstone. _The spirit. The mind. The heart. The soul (do we have souls?). The ghost in the machine, the wizard behind the curtain. Love me. Love me across time and space. Love me for the nothing that I once was, shared with you in the singularity we call mother. Love me for the nothing I will be again. We will be bodiless someday, water will cease to exist. I can reach you then perhaps._

"We need to be careful."

"Yeah."

"I should - run some water on my face." _Wake myself up. Center myself._ He wants to ground himself, snap out of this strange fugue state. The day lingers in the back of his mind like a strange parade. Unreal. A fantasy. A dream. If he can run water from a faucet, splash it on his cheeks, his chin, perhaps he will wake from this trance.

"Bathroom's down the hall, to the left."

"I know where it is, Crowley," Aziraphale says. Quiet and banked. A fire still in its hearth. "I've been here before."

 _Tell me about the end of the world. What do we do now, here in the after?_ There's no manual for regrowth, there's no set of instructions for a new earth, for a second chance, for moving on. Aziraphale thinks of battlefields and scorched earth. Sherman had torn his way to the sea, burning everything in his wake. He remembers how the sarcophagus had cracked at Chernobyl, spilling blue light in a beam to the sky. The earth had been wounded then, in the time after. The soil sick, the grass dead. He looks over to the hall, one finger itchy on the glass. Skating up and down over and over and over again. As the silence stretches, he can only look at the floor there, which had been covered with water. The world was supposed to go one way. This way. Sing to me a song of progress. We were supposed to take this path, supposed to watch the sky. _What have you done?_ Do you remember watching the map? Do you remember placing your finger there, over in the places of those you’ve loved? Do you remember watching the total darkness steal over? 

_The end of the world is coming,_ he had yelled (we had mouths to scream, still had air to make sounds). 

_Come, it’s not so bad. You’re making a big deal out of nothing. Don’t panic._

Aziraphale knows the secrets of the disasters. There had been concerns, there had been warnings. _Will you tell us?_ The people asked. _Of course,_ the government had said. They had, two days later. The blue light had already crawled into the skin, the bones, sunk into the soil, dig into the grass. 

_I trusted them. (They lied. You were right, all this time later. All along.) I’ve been talking to myself, there’s no one out there that wants what I want. Can’t you hear me? You’re in this too. (Can’t you hear me? Can’t you find a way?)_

In the bathroom, there with the ultra-modern sink, Aziraphale stares at himself in the mirror. An angel of no importance, trying to save the world. His soft neck, his hopeful bowtie. The lines under his eyes like exhausted underscores.

There's an echo from earlier. A pub, a whiskey-soaked demon. Aziraphale thinks of touching Crowley, of reaching for his body. _Pity I can't inhabit yours. (Not going there,_ Crowley had muttered. Aziraphale hadn't missed it.) 

What was it the witch had said? _Choose your faces wisely._

 _"Crowley!"_ He calls, his hands still wet from the sink. The tap still running. Crowley appears a moment later in the doorway to the bathroom, one brow arched enough to make a cathedral proud. 

"What the Heaven are you - " 

"The prophecy!" Aziraphale starts. Drying his hands on a charcoal-grey towel, his eyes lit up with the idea of the thing. _It could work. It must. Agnes hasn't been wrong yet, dear boy._ "Choose your faces wisely, for soon enough ye will be playing with fire. Crowley, it must mean hellfire. What other fire could it be? No, of course it's hellfire. And if you wore my face instead, well, it would be perfectly okay! The fire wouldn't harm you at all."

Crowley stares at him, tilting his head slightly. "And you'd be in me."

"Well, of course, it's only logical. That must be what it means."

An odd look crosses Crowley's face. "They don't set demons on fire in Hell, angel."

"Oh, well, naturally - " Aziraphale stills as he realizes what the corresponding punishment would be. His hands still in the towel, still wet. _Holy water. They'd splash holy water on you, shove you into a pool of it._

"So," Crowley says, awkwardly leaning against the doorjamb. "We just have to, er, switch places?" 

Aziraphale draws in a breath, expands his lungs, his chest. "I suppose so. That seems to be the idea."

"How do we do that?"

A frown crosses Aziraphale's face, curling his mouth before he catches it. "The theory seems simple, though I've never tried it. If you were to possess me and I were to possess you simultaneously, we should be left in sole control of each other's bodies."

Crowley nods. The yellow eyes don't blink. A long swallow chases down that highway throat. "So, we should - give it a go then. Dry run. See how the thing shakes out."

"Yes," Aziraphale nods, squaring his shoulders. "Perhaps if we hold hands, it can help focus our timing. That way I'm not fully out of my body before you're in and - " 

"Right, right. Yeah. Look, let's try this lying down. I don't really care to nurse a headache just cause we were a few bloody seconds off." 

"Oh, right. Splendid."

Crowley lifts his jaw, brow rising slightly more. Those eyes as yellow as a tornado's sky, as yellow as a nearby star. "Bed's this way, angel. Come on."

* * *

_London_  
_1581_

_There is a poem recently written by my good friend, Sir Walter Raleigh. May I share these lines?_

_Where both deliberate, the love is slight:_  
_Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?_

_My dear, he told me it was as if there had been a ghost in the amphora, a phantom in the wine. He had had no idea where the idea for the poem had come from. He couldn’t imagine choosing those exact words. And yet, they spilled from his pen. Sounds a bit like your friend in Uruk, doesn’t it? I can’t imagine how that might have happened._

* * *

**_phantasmagoria. noun._ **

**_1_** _: an exhibition of optical effects and illusions_

 **_2a_ ** _: a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined_ _  
_ **_b_ ** _: a scene that constantly changes_

 ** _3_** _: a bizarre or fantastic combination, collection, or assemblage_

* * *

Down the hall, past the endless procession of half-empty rooms. Past a backlit eagle lectern. Crowley's bedroom is simple. The wide bed in the corner, the impossibly long windows. Starlight falls over the simple metal side tables, the black-lacquered wardrobe. Pale-leaved plants line the walls up to the bed. Aziraphale walks over and runs his fingers over one, feeling the velvet of the leaves. "It's lovely," he murmurs. 

" _Don't_ give them ideas," Crowley hisses, grabbing his pile of black silk pajamas from the foot of the bed and dropping them unceremoniously on the small chair in the corner. "I just whipped them into shape. Started to yellow, that one did."

"Oh?" Aziraphale turns, lifting a brow. (He loves when Crowley talks about plants. The quiet way he betrays his own enthusiasm, his depth of knowledge. _You've always been a caretaker, a gardener. A healer. A shepherd._ ) "What causes yellowing?"

"Lack of light," Crowley mutters. 

"You _could_ move them closer to the window, my dear."

"No," Crowley glares at the plants, daring them to challenge him on this. "They'll figure it out. Or it's, _you know_." He mimes a slash across his throat. The plants shiver. Crowley faces him. "So - we just hold hands then?"

A quick breath, a nod. Aziraphale tries not to focus on the bedroom and the wide bed they move to sit on. _Don't think about this bed, that he sleeps in it. Don't think about black silk, sliding it against yourself, against his skin too. The slip of it like water. Don't think about what he might have done here. His body, the skin cells that linger on the sheets. His body, the bones and the muscle too. The Mars-red hair and the hot-veined blood. Who might have been here. If he was alone. (Did you touch yourself and think of me? Did you imagine me under you or over you, your body sinking into mine like a spoon cracking into creme brulee. My own in you, how you'd be hot and wet around me, keeping me safe within the walls of your own self? I would live in you and you in me. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. Did you imagine us like that? Bite me like the apple, please. I want to know you the apple-coring way.)_

Crowley holds out his hand. A warm palm, five unsteady fingers. Aziraphale takes it like a drowning man reaches for a net. 

"Now," Aziraphale says, quiet and determined. They must do this, they must. "Possess me."

"Just like that?"

"Yes. And I'll possess you, my dear. Oh, don't worry. It's quite simple." 

It's like letting go. It's drunkenness and delight, it's more than flying. Aziraphale closes his eyes and is no longer in his eyes. Relax your grip, relax your hold. He is no longer built of atoms and covalent bonds, he is nothing of molecules and chemistry. Yes, he lets go, the ghost in the machine dropping the controls, looking up into the sun. He looks down again, the world shifting and swirling like a spinning marble. Like paint being mixed. There is red and white and gold all over. _Crowley,_ he thinks. There, go on, reach in. Take the controls, settle into the seat. Aziraphale pulls Crowley's skin and bones on like a spacesuit. 

His eyes fly open, gasping again, breathing once more. Next to him, wearing a well-known face with his sloped shoulders and softly-rounded stomach (curved as an apple, as a rose window too), Crowley coughs.

"Fuck," Crowley gasps, blinking wide mosaic-blue eyes at him. "That's _real fucking weird._ "

"Do I really look like that?" Aziraphale peers at the body next to him. There's the fold of the wool trousers and the cut of the waistcoat. See where the pocketwatch has worn the velvet away, see where his pale hair puffs up in the back. (That dreadful cowlick, always the bane of his existence.) 

"Like what?" Crowley asks, trying to raise a brow and failing at spiking it quite as high as he usually does. He gestures to the body he inhabits. "You mean beautiful?"

"Oh, hush. You're incorrigible." 

"You said _charming_ wrong."

"Yes, well," Aziraphale tilts his head, marveling at the swivel of his neck, of his spine. He wriggles his hips with wonder. His body has never been this loose, this gangly. He feels like a pile of wire hangers dropped into a coat. (He's mildly tempted to look down his own shirt, see if there's any skin there at all. If there's anything other than right angles and hypotenuses, a sparking Tesla coil.) "You've had your fun. Now, let's switch back." 

In their own bodies, they lay breathless against the mattress. One lumpy pillow is stuffed awkwardly under Aziraphale's head (he tries to not think about that awful cowlick, certainly aggravated). _“_

Are we going to be okay?”

Crowley and this pillow-soft half-smile. He leans over, brushing the damp curls from Aziraphale’s forehead. “Yeah,” he breathes. “Look, we'll figure it out. We’re gonna be okay.”

“How do you - still -“ _How can you look at this world and not lose hope? You saw it for what it was so long ago. How can you still?_

“ _Someone’s_ gotta watch out, right? Gotta keep the bastards honest.”

“So you do.” Aziraphale picks at the slight hangnail forming on his thumb. (The world's been ending, he hasn't stopped for a manicure.)

“Eh, might as well be me,” Crowley mutters, looking away. Every revolution must start somewhere, every rebellion must start somewhere. Questions sat, unbidden and unwelcome, on Aziraphale's tongue. _Why are you an outcast? Who were you? What did you say? What did you do? Why did you Fall?_

“They think they’re doing the right thing.” _How the fuck can you do this to us?_ Think of Benedict Arnold, turning redcoat. Old betrayal, old Judas, knife in one hand and his thirty pieces of silver in the other. It is like waking up from a fugue state, a fever dream.

“Angel, look, some folks just wanna see everything burn.”

“You don’t," Aziraphale murmurs, "And you’re a demon.”

“There’d only been two options then. Heaven wasn’t one for me.” Crowley shrugs, his shoulders sliding against the Egyptian cotton sheets. "Maybe there will be something else someday. Who knows. Might as well be a monster in the meantime."

Aziraphale nods. Perhaps he even understands. _The lesser of the two evils._ "You're a hero. You saved the world today."

Crowley's brows shoot up. " _Hero_ isn't really something anyone ever calls a demon. You're bloody fucking mad."

"Well. Perhaps," he says, swallowing thickly. "Tomorrow we'll - wait. And see. As each other."

"Yes."

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says. _You lived, you live. Thank God._ Crowley. (A love like a ghost. _We’ll be killed if we’re seen.)_

“Angel,” Crowley says. There's worry in his face, worry in the lines around his eyes. Aziraphale turns over, rolling in the bed to face him. The moonlight shifts through the stations of the night, changing position on the shale-grey walls. Aziraphale breathes in the smell of this well-loved bed. These soft sheets and blankets, these lumpy pillows. That same wood-heavy scent lingers on them, that same hint of coal and hot metal that clings to Crowley as he passes by on the street or walks through the bookshop. As he pours wine into a glass or passes the salt. 

“Be careful.” _Carry my body like you carried a thermos once. Carefully. Cupped in two hands._

“Hey, it's me. Right? I’m always careful.” Crowley pauses, that sarcastic smirk only gently on the mouth. _I hope I see you again. Keep yourself safe._ "After. When it's over and if … I mean, _when_ everything goes alright. Where do you want to meet?"

"The duck pond, please. Will you?"

"Yeah. 'Course." Then Crowley hesitates. Watch how the rawboned face snaps up here, how Crowley's eyes are focused under those furrowed brows. His skin is paper-white against the bleak-colored cotton of his shirt. Without his jacket, he looks thin. Too thin, too small. Aziraphale imagines him in this empty flat, rattling around like a pinball. Like a toy in a cereal box. Nothing to catch him. 

"Kiss me," Crowley says. It's different this time, the two of them laying in Crowley's quiet bed, here in a dark room. Crowley says _kiss me_ and he is no more than six inches away. The simplest movement could bring them together. The smallest shuffle could bridge the distance, tumble them together. 

But Aziraphale is still holy. Still a river of crystal light. Still a sea of dew.

"Crowley, we cannot - " Aziraphale curls his fingers tight, presses his mouth into a firm line. He is intensely aware of the composition of his body. Oxygen and carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen. Seventy percent, give or take, is water. He tries to keep his mouth shut, tries to be careful. There's no seal he can keep on himself, no way to be certain. Aziraphale takes a step back at the mere suggestion of touching Crowley, afraid of his own Midas touch.

"Aziraphale, you were _in_ me. I was _in you_. If I can inhabit your body, if I can wear you - " He looks up, something pleading in his expression. His brows raised like hands in prayer. "Come on. You gotta trust me. This. Just kiss me. I swear that you won't hurt me. Promise." 

"Crowley." He begs with his words. _Please, I can't risk it._

"Might not make it through tomorrow." Crowley is closer still, leaning over. That hand catching Aziraphale's chin, tilting it up. Bringing Aziraphale's pale eyes to meet his own. "Please, just once? For luck."

Perhaps, it's the wine. Aziraphale falls forward. _Kiss me_ sounds like a siren song and he's forgotten to be lashed to the mast. "What if - " 

"Not gonna leave you, angel," Crowley says, his words tumbling out. His eyes close for a long beat, then he stares up at the ceiling. Fumbling, he reaches for his glass from the nightstand, taking a long sip. His fingers tighten slightly around the wine, fingernails paling at the pressure. "It's gonna be okay, trust me. Have I ever lied to you?"

 _No, you never have. You're trouble,_ Aziraphale thinks. _You've always been trouble. That's the trouble with you._

 _Kiss me_ first. And yes, yes, those fingers at the jaw, the lift of the head. _We should not._ Why is a kiss the most intimate? We can fuck, make love, bare these hidden pieces of ourselves? But the most revealing thing of all comes from our always-seen mouths. Yes, yes, this here, mouth to mouth, heaving and clinging to each other, these wild heartbeats attached at the lip. _I'm going to tell you a secret. I love you._

Aziraphale troubles over the idea, aching from six-thousand years of ghost touch. His blueshift eyes never lifting from the bitten marks in Crowley's lower lip, the flushed pink of him. Pink and red and pale too. Nothing of gold but the eyes. (He worries about Midas, about this moment of indiscretion. It could be fine. Or, as Midas had pulled back from his wife and found a statue in his arms, it could be the end of the world once again.) 

_Don't you dare leave me here._

For the first time in six-thousand years, Aziraphale leans in. He sails across the grey-sheeted sea, moving finally freely. His lips against Crowley's, his mouth there. Dry skin to dry skin, the brush of Crowley's stubble-beard against his own. Sandpaper to sandpaper. Crowley's hand moves to his cheek, to cupping each side of his face. A noise comes from deep in Aziraphale's throat. 

Crowley kisses with his entire body. He sinks into Aziraphale, trying to find the edges and boundaries of where he is allowed, what he can have. Aziraphale pulls him in deeper, his arms around Crowley's narrow waist. He opens his mouth, parts his lips. Spills out all of himself. Go on, open up. Unscrew the cap.

A kiss like a wave. Pressurized and bottled-up. This choked-off, dangerous thing. Aziraphale has feared for his tied-off tongue, for the blood trapped there. The danger of unsaid things turning dark and necrotic, creeping through his veins. I love you. Never said. Not in words. Not in touch. Said in every way but that one. Aziraphale kisses Crowley. His freshwater mouth. There are bright lights, there is the scribble-scatter of his heart. There are long, desperate hands on his arms, wrapping around his waist. There is a moan, a keening lost sound. In their excitement, their inexperience, there are even teeth. Nothing burns. Nothing falls apart. Nothing turns to pulseless gold.

Even Midas got a second chance. 

* * *

_Paris_  
_1890_

_The ghost in the pen appears to have struck a poet again. It's a strange affliction, isn't it, these poets with words appearing unbidden? My dear Oscar wrote something recently. Let me share it with you:_

  
_Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;_  
_Else it were better we should part, and go,_  
_Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,_  
_And I to nurse the barren memory_  
_Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung._

  
  
_Do you ever imagine other lives? What if we were born in towns next to each other? Maybe there was an orchard next to your house, a lake next to mine. Maybe you threw stones at my window, crawled in late at night. Maybe you took me to dinners, put your arm around me. Maybe I wore your jacket home. Perhaps no one looked. It could have been different. I might have brought you roses once. Do you ever imagine?_

_I should not write this. Blame the wine. Blame the devil on my shoulder (I haven’t seen you in years and years and years. I hope you’re resting well.) Have you ever wanted to say something? Felt it stuck in your throat so badly that you might scream? I walked home today with Oscar. Took his arm. He kissed my cheek. He’s a lovely man. I enjoy his company. Quite engaging! A devilish wit, almost demonic there. A pale imitation. I miss you. I lo-_

[The remainder of the letter is crossed out.]

* * *

Crowley's head tilts up as Aziraphale runs his hand along his cheek, his chin, down his long throat. 

"I've wanted to touch you for so long," Aziraphale murmurs.

"Yeah," Crowley breathes, his eyes closed. "Since the Beginning. For me, I mean."

In the Beginning, there was Eden. There's still Eden. Aziraphale knows this. Knows this like he knows how to crack his knuckles, knows this like the scar on the back of his left hand. He had doubled back once, thousands of years ago, trying to find a soft place to land. So, he had miracled the grass softer to create a bed for himself. Had lain awake, staring at the sky, wondering if it could have gone differently for them. When Crowley had first reached out to stroke his hair, all those long years ago, well, no one else had touched him in millennia. His skin had ached. Heaven is a cold place and Aziraphale had forgotten what touch could be like. He had leaned into it. His skin empty and on fire. 

"I love you," Aziraphale murmurs. 

Crowley is as red as broken pottery, as red as a warning sky. As red as a prayerbook opening in his hands, ready to be read from. _Raise your voice._ "Shit, yeah. Same, angel. Fucking same."

_Yes, yes, yes, I love you. I love you like this. I want this, you to tap me on the shoulder whenever you're near. Your hands in my hair like holding the reins, not letting me spin out on the black ice. Nothing will be dangerous then, nothing will get lost. You're good at keeping things together, at taking care of things. Take me. Take care of me. I want to be yours. (Just like this.)_

Crowley's eyes stay slam-shut and his breathing heavy. Aziraphale quietly stroking his face. 

"Tell me," Crowley says. "Tell me what you want."

That question shouldn't feel loaded. It shouldn't be so heavy. Aziraphale shouldn't feel like he's had these stone tablets on his back for years, bent over from the weight of his own desire. And here comes Crowley, crow-winged and offering to take them. _Hand those over, angel,_ Crowley seems to whisper, _let me share the weight._

"Oh, I don't know," he says, breathless and lost. He fingers the little Bible, the one on the top of the pile. (There's a misprint in it, somewhere deep within.) "I try not to think about it. It's too much."

 _I want everything._ Imagine a world remade. Imagine their chains cut loose. Imagine a quiet night in. There is an overstuffed armchair and a tartan throw. A fire in the fireplace, just as there should be. Bookcases overflowing with titles and well-cracked spines, their stories peeking out to watch the simple one unfolding here. There are two men (as best as can be estimated) laying on a long sofa. One is an angel, one is a demon. 

They, neither of them, belong to anyone but each other. 

"Crowley?" Aziraphale whispers. 

"Yeah?"

"This is real, isn't it?" His eyes shake, holding Crowley's pupils fast. Dark to dark, magnet to magnet. _Don't you dare leave me here. Don't you dare let me go._ "Promise me it's not a dream." _Tell me I won't wake up without you._

"Yeah. It's reality, angel," Crowley says, soft into the pillow. "Nothin's more real."

* * *

_**ghost story. noun.** _

_**1** : a story about ghosts_

_**2** : a tale based on imagination rather than fact_

* * *

"Today just seemed so strange. Unreal, perhaps."

"Yeah." 

"And you're here." 

"Yes."

"I can touch you."

"You should touch me more."

_If you're still here in the morning, I'll never stop._

"Do you think there's a future for us?"

"We'll see what tomorrow brings." 

"And after?" Aziraphale asks. 

Crowley kisses his neck. His ear, his hair against the pillow. "I'll build you a castle wherever you want."

Aziraphale laughs. "I don't need a castle. Something smaller, my dear."

"Fine," Crowley rolls his eyes. "A cozy two-bedroom castle with a fireplace and a garden. And enough shelves for the entire national library." 

"That's the spirit, dearest." 

"There's something I wonder," Crowley asks. "Just a question that's bugging me. If God is up there, all fully-powered up, one-hundred percent battery life. All-knowing, all-seeing. Then She knew what would happen today. And She knows about the prophecy." He swallows. "About us." 

Aziraphale glances briefly upward. Nothing there but a plaster ceiling. Nothing but a light fixture.

"I suppose that's possible. I wouldn't put it past Her."

"If I can do this," Crowley whispers, leaning over to kiss Aziraphale, his tongue darting into Aziraphale's open mouth. Coming back unharmed, unsinged. Unburnt. "Then She allowed it."

_We're not alone, the two of us, are we? Do You walk with us? Is this part of Your plan?_

“If I only could make a deal with God,” Crowley says, somewhere into the pillow, “get Her to swap our places.”

“Pardon?”

A raised eyebrow. A laugh. “Nothing," Crowley says, humor lacing his words. "Nothing important at all."

* * *

_**Holy Ghost. noun.** _

_: the third person of the Trinity_

* * *

"You never answered the question," Crowley rolls over, closer still. He pushes himself up, half a shadow blanketing Aziraphale.

"Oh?"

"Wanna know what you want," Crowley drops his head to Aziraphale's ear. Noses into his neck. Feel the hot breath there, a swipe of an inhuman tongue. "I can tell you all about what I want. Thousands of years just left to think, angel. No one to reach for."

"What did _you_ think about?" Aziraphale asks, his breathing coming harshly. The bowtie feels tight around his neck. His clothing chafes on his chest, his stomach. Too much, there is too much between them. 

" _Ngk_ ," Crowley says, suddenly red-faced and short-circuited. His tongue comes easily when he knocks at the door, when he asks to hear a tale. It's different when the tables are spun. There's nothing of silver in his mouth. Nothing silver-tongued. Nothing silver-spooned.

"I thought about a great many things," Aziraphale whispers, growing bolder in his welcomed touch. Crowley's chest against him, the heartbeat scattershot against his ribcage. 

"Did you?" Crowley gasps. "Like, what kind of - " 

"Easier to tell you what I didn't think about," comes Aziraphale's continued whisper. A tease of touch. "I thought about you in that black robe that you wore in Eden. Wanted to push it off your shoulders, use it as a blanket while I sucked your cock. I'd use it to wipe my mouth off after you came down my throat." 

Crowley's cheeks flush blood red. Someone moans. (It's him.) Aziraphale grins, wicked and sharp, his hand a gentle contrast to the wolf in his mouth. He feels suddenly confident. _We faced them together, we'll always be together. No matter what happens, you love me. I love you._ Here he is, Aziraphale, Principality of the Eastern Gate, former-bearer of a flaming sword, part-time bookseller. Full-time lover of a heart-attack demon. _Look at us now,_ he thinks, realizing that his world is held in this bed alone, slowly taking Crowley apart with each whispered word.

Aziraphale kisses that long neck, that bared clavicle. "Wanted to take you in Rome, push you up against a wall, slide between your thighs. A bottle of olive oil, the good stuff. Splash it there and, god, your gorgeous thighs. You're a dream, you know? How many times have I gotten off just thinking about the shape of you?"

"I'm - shit, I'm nothing much," Crowley hisses, keening where Aziraphale runs a hand between the button gaps of his shirt, finding bare skin. Nothing of a phantom in his touch. Feel the living skin, the warmth and the shift. 

"You're everything," Aziraphale says. "You asked what I want. I want you to say it. Tell me you love me. Out loud. And then, darling, I want you to make love to me. Later, I want to be inside of you." He pauses, "Is that alright?"

 _Always._ Crowley seems to gasp with a red-blooded smile, his black-blown eyes rolling back into his head. He falls back into Aziraphale's open mouth and waiting kiss. One of Aziraphale's hands snakes up the soft, bone-pale stomach, up the familiar solar plexus. Comes to rest on the hollow space of Crowley's chest. Yes, rest here, closest to the heart. There is no fat there, in the center of the breastbone. When Aziraphale touches Crowley here, it is only a bit of skin and bone, below, further still, his beating heart.

“I love you,” Crowley whispers "I love you, I love you. I have loved you from the start of time. You gotta know that, right? Saw you on the wall and I was done for. I've tried to be good to you, even if I couldn't - tell you properly." 

"Oh, darling." Aziraphale tucks Crowley's hell-red hair back, back behind an ear. Whispers it right into the tunnel, like an echo tossed into a hallway. It bounces, rattling around. He pinches Crowley's dark shirt between his fingers. "Take this off."

Crowley drops his shirt on the floor. Aziraphale wants to touch himself already. He presses a quick, firm palm against his already hard cock, biting his own lip. _Make love to me, make me forget there's a world around us. If everything ends for us tomorrow, give me something to take with me._ God, yes, skin against skin, this riot of ache. _I need you._ It doesn’t make sense to need ourselves. Aziraphale has lived forever, he understands everything. His pale blue dot eyes like an electron microscope, the world on a glass slide. But he cannot pull out his own wants and mount them in saline, cannot dissect them on a stainless steel table _. Is it just for you? Your mind, your heart, your anxious self? The way you curl up in the corners of couches with a magazine draped over your face? I wanted you from the start. Yes, that pale skin, hair like pomegranates._

One hand over the ribs, the swells and sinks of the stomach, the hips, the delta between the thighs. His cock, hard, covered in velvet-soft skin. Salty as the sea. Have you ever knocked back an oyster? Yes, he is briny and sharp as an oyster, soft as the center (which has never seen the sun). _How long has it been since you slept with someone else?_ (It doesn't matter. He doesn't fault Crowley, doesn't trouble over whether or not there might have been someone else. There is nothing to fault, he was not Aziraphale's to have.) Is it different now? They have not talked about it. Yes, we might share ourselves but we do not want to share that which we love. It is different. We keep score, we know exactly how much of ourselves have been given, how much has been held back. Yes, yes, the monthly budget, expense receipts. _I need you._

_(Tell me. Tell me always now, please. Love is a fire, stoke it. Feed me words like oxygen, something for me to live on. Letters like greenstick branches. Words are hard to burn. Say it in the air, say it with your voice. No fire lives without air.)_

Crowley crowds him up against the concrete-grey sheets. Aziraphale's open hips flattened and his legs spread. His cock is brilliantly red and obvious, leaking without his permission. Here, pushed with loving arms against the mattress and pulled apart, he is spatchcocked and taken apart. _Take me. Swallow me. Feast on me. I can't breathe without you. Be the bones of me, hold me up. We can be one body. Sink into me, become part of me. You can fill in the empty spaces (I can fill in yours)._ Aziraphale's hands in Crowley's hair, his breath against Crowley's neck. A firm thigh slips between Crowley's legs, nudging them further apart. Putting him on display. Look at him, this angular sharp thing with hair the color of shattered pottery, pulled apart to be seen. 

"You're beautiful," Aziraphale whispers, his fingertips trailing down the lank chest, the insufficient offering of his hips. Consider incompleteness as a verb, consider love as a verb. Love is something we do together, this give and take. Love is a choice. Love is an action. Let us choose to love gently, thoughtfully, carefully. Love does not surprise us. It's not a back-alley grab at the heart, not a stolen purse. Tristan and Isolde drank from the cup and knew what it contained. We give our hearts daily, over and over again. Check them out like a library book. 

We can take them back if we need to. (Aziraphale has never wanted his heart back.) 

_Touch me, please._

Crowley's hands move. They don't hesitate, curling at his wrists, meandering up his arms, over his shoulders, down his stomach. They brush here at his hips. Past his neck, down his chest. They're in his hair, they're nipping at his arms. One wandering hand brushes against his cock, teasing there. Promising to be something more soon. That wet, gentle mouth sucking at his neck.

"Please," Crowley whispers, his voice hushed. _I want you._

"I'm quite ready, my love," Aziraphale says. In the heat of Crowley's hands, he melts like a candle. See here, Aziraphale as rounded and warm as the sun. His square fingers in the darkest spaces of Crowley. In his heart, his body. Between his legs, showing light to his dark places. Crowley like a fire, unfurling warmth into him in turn. Crowley's cock presses against him, impatient and hot. It doesn't enter. Not yet. Doesn't fuck him. Not yet. Aziraphale keens, feeling the tip of it staying just there, right at the edge. Not coming in. He's an empty hallway, an uninhabited room. _Fuck me. Come inside. Fill me up, please._ "I need you," Aziraphale whispers, bare breath against Crowley's superheated skin. 

Crowley nods, gasping into Aziraphale's shoulder, wordless and voiceless. Those solid fingers curl tightly around his wrists. Crowley pushes into him and Aziraphale arches into it. 

They don't have to be quiet. No, not anymore. Still, when Crowley comes, bucking up on the bed and clenching his nails into Aziraphale’s wanting sides, Aziraphale shoves his hand over the other’s mouth anyway. He likes the way it feels, teeth and spit, hot breath. He cannot read lips by touch but he knows the feel of his name written against the palm of his hand.

Once upon a time, we invented writing to let ghosts tell tales. Now, they learn how to scribble love on each other. To write love in tangled sheets and sweat-damp hair, in nails raking red lines down open backs, in bitten lips and in the sounds pulled from each other's mouths. Wordless and ecstatic, the sounds of the births of stars.

Aziraphale comes in the palm of Crowley's hand, the world bright white behind his slammed shut eyelids. Nothing of a ghost in his arms. 

This time, the arms reach back.

* * *

_Salem, Massachusetts_  
_1971_

_Angel,_

_I’m somewhere in Salem now. Witches, all that. (None of them any good. Not the point.) It’s thick with ghosts here. They, the Americans, find ghosts in anywhere with a past. Any house over fifty years old is said to have phantoms in the walls, to have ghosts in the pipes. How long have I known you? No wonder you’re a ghost to me. I spend more time with the idea of you than I ever have with you. I’m used to you being invisible, used to you not saying anything. Except in letters. Visit sometime. I miss you._

_I know you haven’t met this century. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t ever matter, angel. Pretend it’s poetry (it’s not that different anyway). I’ll play it for you sometime. In another world._

_If I could make the world as pure_  
_And strange as what I see_  
_I'd put you in a mirror_  
_I put in front of me_

* * *

_**rapture** **. noun.** _

_**1** : an expression or manifestation of ecstasy or passion_

_**2** **a** : a state or experience of being carried away by overwhelming emotion_  
_**b** : a mystical experience in which the spirit is exalted to a knowledge of divine things_

* * *

“You promised to play me a song," Aziraphale says, an impish curl to his smile. "Back in 1971, I believe. No protesting, dear, I have it in writing.”

Crowley throws his head back and laughs. Aziraphale feels very light. He is drunk on helium and his stringless heart. They lay together in bed, Aziraphale's head on Crowley's shoulder, trailing figure-eights and ouroboroses on the smooth skin under Crowley's clavicle. "Do you think that the world really might have ended today? That She would have let it?"

Crowley shrugs. "Can't ever tell. I never know what's going on upstairs."

"Perhaps the point was - that it didn't. I don't know why, or how even - "

"It gets to go on now," Crowley murmurs, pulling Aziraphale's hand to his mouth. Kissing the back of it, there where the vein shifts over the tendons. There in the lines on each knuckle. "As long as it wants to. As long as they take care of it."

"And us?" Aziraphale asks, breathless. 

Crowley's smile is warm. There's no gold in his smile but it spills out of his bright eyes. "As long as we want, angel. Just you and me." He draws a long hand up Aziraphale's forearm, his eyebrow raising. "As long as we take care of us." 

The sheets cover them, grey-woven and sweat-damp. Outside, the moon looks down with silver light. _Where are you going and what do you wish,_ it asks Aziraphale. 

_I'm staying right here. Just here, where I belong._

"Have you heard the idea that there are an infinite number of worlds?" Crowley asks.

"Of course. I'm a bit doubtful of the concept, I must admit. But it's an interesting theory." 

"Don't think it's possible," Crowley says, mischief in his eyes.

"Go on," Aziraphale prods, "Do tell."

"See, the thing is that all possibilities are supposed to exist. So there would be worlds where you hated books. (Impossible.) And food (well, that's right out)." He pushes himself up on his elbow, leaning over where Aziraphale is laid on the bed. A gentle kiss to the mouth. To the tip of Aziraphale's nose. To both eyelids. His forehead too. "And there would have to be worlds where we never met."

"Oh," Aziraphale murmurs. 

"That's how I know," Crowley says, his mouth close to Aziraphale's own, sharing a breath. Singular. Sharing a single point on the Earth, a joined spirit. The ghost in the bed, held close to Aziraphale. How many times has he felt the teasing wind? How many times has he been nearly kissed? Lips through fabric or pressed against glass? Impossible and held back. Other voices in other rooms in other worlds. The ghost that walks at his side, red-haired and bright-eyed.

"I know," Crowley continues, "because there'd never be a world where I didn't love you. It's not possible, angel."

And Crowley kisses Aziraphale, sloshing over the sides. This mess of them together. Whole and imperfect, flesh and bone. Real and tangible. Six-thousand years of imagining, six-thousand years of phantom-touch. The ghost of hands at his hips. 

I've been telling you a lie. All love stories are not ghost stories. No, it's quite the opposite. Love unfolds in many varied and many splendored forms. We hope to reach out and touch, to not be separate, left to the wind and the veil. Left to memory and daydreams. Yes, some love stories are simple things. A cottage in the South Downs, the rolling spread of fog over Devil's Dyke. Wildflowers and Earl Grey tea. Warm arms to hold you with, to wrap you up. Keep you steady, keep you safe. Nothing of ghosts. Nothing of daydreams.

But no ghost lingers on without a reason. Without something they had hoped for. Something they had left behind, prayed for and wanted. They press a kiss to the back of the wind and hope it might find its way.

All ghost stories are love stories. And sometimes we get to live again.

* * *

**_love story. noun._ **

_: a tale of lovers_

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted with permission.


End file.
